Sweet dreams... are we sleepwalking into a catastrophic health crisis?

Next month, Rachel Reeves will deliver the Government's make-or-break autumn budget. Speculation over what it will contain is rife, but one thing that certainly won't be prioritised is funding to make sure the nation gets a good night’s sleep. But maybe it should be.

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It’s no secret that sleep is one of the fundamentals of health. Good, consistent sleep is vital for cognitive function, allowing our bodies to recover and helping to protect mental health. But as a modern society, we're not very good at it. According to Dr Andy Galpin, an American health coach, we're actually getting worse.

This causes issues beyond health. A paper from 2017 estimated that, across five OECD countries, $680 billion a year was being lost to sleep deprivation, with tiredness making workers less productive. With questions frequently raised about the UK’s productivity problem, focusing on the nation’s sleep patterns could be a viable solution.